Demystified

Stripped it down and found a broken oil control ring on the piston. Ordered some new rings and hopefuuly we will be running again soon.

Totally mystified.

Last Monday I went to Bourne End on the Velo. I rode it home fine and nothing seemed unusual or untoward. Left it parked outside. On Friday I went to go out on it to discover it seems as if the engine has totally seized. Can't kick it over. Tried bumping it....no joy. Clutch works. Gears seem to select Ok and find neutral. How does a bike seize when it is sleeping??

I shall disconnect the primary drive first in the hope that there is a problem there. Then I suppose I will have to start working down from the valve gear. Not a happy bunny :-(

Getting wet

When you really don't want to go to work on the bike you have to. It was bucketing down this morning and I had to be in Bourne End by 9.00. The old Range Rover was down the yard with the horse trailer hitched so Tom could take a digger back that we had hired for the weekend. Oh well go in the MG. Now, I bought new batteries (it needs 2 x 6 volt batteries) for this only about 6 months ago and when I came back from holiday there was not enough juice in them to start the car. I think the immobiliser tends to be a small drain. But I had bump started it a few days ago and given it a good run and it was starting again. Not this morning. It needed more than its normal churn and then too flat. Bought the bloody things by mail order and can't even remember who to complain to. So on with all the highly expensive Hein Gericke gear and onto the Velo, which did start. It more or less solidly pissed down all the way in and I can report that the clothing is NOT totally waterproof. The material itself is but the double zip system at the front is not. The water had made its way past both the zips and my shirt had a wet patch about 6 inches wide from collar to waist. I am only moderately impressed by this clothing. It is very warm and windproof. However, the waterproofing is not great and the zips have a very annoying tendency to trap the inner linings which leave to struggling to undo them and risk breakage forcing them.

Touring France

As some of you know, plan A was to buy a nice touring bike and use that instead of the Duke to tour France this summer. Hence the purchase in March of a very lardy BMW K1100RT. A few runs told us it was too heavy and too tall. Then I thought we want to TOUR. Not blat down autoroutes at 100mph but amble along departmental roads in the sunshine at about half that speed. So why not a nice comfy old Brit bike. Remembering my Venom, its indestructibility and relative lack of vibration I went out and bought this 350 Velocette MAC, complete with Craven panniers. Here you see it loaded up outside a French Gite we stayed in.

The first leg was to Pete's house in Langonnet, having docked at St. Malo. An excellent long weekend shared with Pete and Wendy on their Hinckley Bonnie, Niall & Liz on their Vstrom, Andy on his Ducati ST4 and Martin on his BMW RS1100. Can't remember a lot except long intellectual discussions such as what type of bike would a lesbian fancy? I think we settled on a Honda CX500 because of its lack of phallic symbolism...or something like that. Oh and I do remember that while us guys were talking dirty the women seemed to be obsessed with 'shabby sheep' and somewhere called Eurodiff (no I don't think they sold differentials).

After the weekend the others went back to Blighty and Jo and I ambled off down to the Dordogne. We took 2 and half days over it, starting late, docking early with plenty of breaks and long lunches. We stuck to the Department roads. I found the Velo very comfortable and easy to ride. Nice and light, easy to manoeuvre and the handling was really very good considering how loaded it was over the back wheel. Jo complained of a certain amount of vibration at the back. It seems that many bikes seem to transmit what vibes they have to the pillion footrests. On the front there was hardly any vibration.

Arriving in the Dordogne we found a nice little Gite just outside Les Eyzies on the banks of the Vezere which seemed a good place to base ourselves. From the Gite we were able to potter out everyday to see something just wearing shorts and T shirts on the bike. There is loads to see in this area with beautiful medieval towns like Sarlat, bastide towns, chateaux, cave dwellings, prehistoric cave paintings etc. The roads are great and the whole area has a golden glow coming off the warm stone they use for building. After 5 days it was time to make our way to Bilbao for the ferry home. We took 2 days to get to Bilbao, staying in Dax the first night. Arriving in Bilbao we could not find anywhere nice to stay and ended up in an IBIS in a sort of 'Thurrock Lakeside' development. The hotel was OK but the food was absolutely dire. I ordered a salmon fillet which and first been aggressively nuked in the microwave to defrost it followed by a good grilling. Consequently the flesh was all powdery. I sent it back and made do with the starter only which wasn't much better.

The Velo had proved to be very reliable. Early on the speedo cable broke because of too aggresive routing by the previous owner. The silencer started to self destruct at the 'fishtail' end, must have been older than it looked and a bolt helping to hold the dynamo on decided to chuck itself in a hedge somewhere. I suppose it got through about one and half litres of oil which over about 1500 miles was not bad.

As ever France was a country that is a joy to visit. The people always seem welcoming and friendly. The food generally is excellent although I do detect a small falling off in quality from earlier years. Great meals though are still to be had a reasonable cost. In one little village in the Dordogne we had a superb 5 course menu for 18 euros each. The Velocette caused some confusion because the name is French but few of the old French guys had heard of it. Had to keep telling them it was not French and was made in Birmingham, which I think they sort of only half believed.

We're all going on a summer holiday

Here we have one Velo MAC champing at the bit all loaded up ready to go on holiday on Le Grande Tour de France. Spot Ye Olde original King & Queen touring seat! I have offered up prayers to the great Magneto God and hope we will have a trouble free 2 weeks. There are some tools nestling in that little box just below and to the left of the oil tank including a special one to adjust the infamous Velo clutch. The tyres have been pumped up to take all the weight and the suspension set on its hardest setting. Stage 1 is to go to Pete's place in Langonnet. I understand we are meeting Pete, Wendy, Niall, Liz, Marmite and Andy in the restaurant of the Portsmouth to St. Malo ferry tonight. I have plotted a route to Langonnet that is mainly department roads. We won't be doing much more than 50. I guess the others will zap off down the autoroute. It is a 100 miles from St.Malo to Langonnet so that should take us 2.5 to 3 hours. Pete has booked the local restaurant for the traditional arrival grand stodge in the evening. After the weekend we will set off for southern France where the plan is to tour a round staying in B&Bs, eating and taking in the sights. I fancy seeing the cave paintings in the Dordogne but it is very difficult to get in because they only allow 180 visitors a day. Exploring the Pyrenees a bit might also be fun, I have only ever charged through them on the way to somewhere else. No doubt there will be some shopping along the way but there is precious little room in the panniers. In 2 weeks time we catch the P&O ferry back from Bilbao to Portsmouth.

Motorcycle clothing

As most of you will know I have been using the same old black leather jacket that I bought when I was about 17 or 18 which makes it about 45 years old. The summer zip has shredded and I can't get into it anyway. The winter zip is still OK. Whilst it has a certain period charm it really needs an imperviousness to cold and wet that only the young have.

Feeling rather flush I invested in a set of Hein Gericke goretex stuff recently which is truly excellent on the keeping warm and dry front but being a self confessed poser I still felt a bit stylistically challenged. I had been very tempted by some Ducati leather jackets at Pro Twins in Godstone. Jo who is always up for a shopping expedition persuaded me to pay a visit with intention to purchase. We then got treated to the how to screw up a sale treatment.

The very nice guy who sells parts handed me over to the guy who sells bikes and clothing. Like anyone else buying I wanted really to be alone to browse and try on. Using the sales guy to provide information. Finding a jacket I liked I started to take the armour out. I hate this stuff and these jackets were to some extent fashion items and all that armour crap ruins the look of them on. Over comes "sales" guy. "What ARE you doing?" he enquires aggressively. I explained that I wanted to try the jacket on without the armour to see how it looked and felt. He grumpily acquiesced to this but hovered all the time I was having debate with Jo on whether to buy or not (she was less keen than me). I then took jacket off and he then pounced on it saying "I will put it all back together now" and took it away for re-assembly. This really pissed me off because I still had not made up my mind whether to have it or not. So out we stomped.

Went over to P&H Motors at Crawley who have a bit of Ducati stuff and got a nicer jacket at a cheaper price.

Finally; helmets. Why are some helmets nearly £300 and some £30? I accept that it is a safety device but they are all made to BSI standards. Has anyone ever seen any objective testing that says the really expensive helmets are more protective than a cheap one? I accept that my preferred option, open face, will be less protective than full face. As a life long purchaser of cheap helmets my observations are:

1. The visor always gets ruined long before the helmet wears out then it is a devil of a job to get a replacement and I often get a new helmet because the visor has gone.
2. Generally I have always found cheap helmets comfortable enough and 'do the job'.
3. From an aesthetic point of view I think a nice simple black or silver open face looks a lot better (if a helmet can look good at all) than some garish Shoei thing.

Pictures

This is a trial to see how this link works: Click here for photos

The Club

I thought it might be a good idea to post up a few facts about what we are in case any interested parties stumble across us on the internet. The Wimbledon & District Motorcycle Club is an old club with a history that goes back before the 2nd World War. The Wimbledon and District bit is now rather theoretical as members have moved out over the years to places as distant as Norfolk, Oxfordshire and Sussex. However, there is a nucleus of people that can still be classified as living within the district of Wimbledon.

There are only about 30 of us of diverse backgrounds and ages that share a common interest in motorcycling. We are not a 1 make club and members have bikes that include BMW tourers, old Brit iron, Jap specials, Italian sports bikes etc. We meet on the first Friday of every month at The Dukes Head at Tadworth in Surrey. We loosely organise a number of events every year and this can include, dinners, trips to Chimay and Spa, "alcofrolics" to France, short motorcycling holidays to Brittany and other events as they arise. Most of us are now in our 40s or 50s with a small number of younger members. We very much welcome new friends of any age who would like to join us. Anyone that fancies joining us send an email to geoffstovold@googlemail.com

Virgin blog

Ok girls.........am told I must set an example and "blog" for the first time in my life. Well, somewhere to put knitting patterns for spare sprockets - what could be more exciting than that?! I may even have a sprocket receipe somewhere................................................Jo :0)

The Newsletter is dead

In the small hours I had an epiphany moment. Feeling increasingly guilty at my failure to produce a newsletter, I suddenly though why not a blog instead. The newsletter is redolent of stamps, envelopes, men in uniform on red bicycles and the sounds of a terrier shredding your mail as it drops on the mat. We are now in the 21st century and the postman is an endangered species.

The attraction of the blog is that I can write a small amount when the moment takes me and others can chip in with their two pennyworth too. I don't have to produce a whole tome at one go, with precious little material and not much imagination.

Also what prompted this was that last night was a particularly good meet at the Dukes Head last night almost like the old times at pub next to the bus garage. Float and Sheryl, Chris, Niall and Liz, Richard, me and Jo, Rob and his friend also called Rob and Crasher. Welcome Rob 2, we hope we see more of you. We need some young blood. Jo and I had a good run up on the Duke (a tad fast for Jo's comfort, I got the odd smack on the back of the head). A slower run back because I had had a pint (only the one officer). Rob's pocket cafe racer is still going strong and looking better for an improved seating arrangement. I think this is a brilliant little bike produced on a sub £200 budget. Rob should do a piece for Back Street Heroes. He is still thinking of doing Chimay on it. He wants to know who else is going to Chimay this year. I think the Murray's are and possibly the Rowans. Thats it for now. I am now going to figure out the settings and how to publish this thing.